The Halberd at Red Cliff tells the story of how the Jian'an (196–220) and the Three Kingdoms (220–265) periods became part of the Chinese cultural imaginary and how the memory of the era gradually evolved in changing cultural contexts over the centuries up until the cinematic representations of the twenty-first century. The book is divided into five chapters organized into three parts, each focussing on a particular aspect and group of texts of this cultural imagining. Chapter 1 traces the creation of the Jian'an era as a literary construction, while chapter 2 examines works by Wang Can (177–217) and the Three Caos (Cao Cao (155–220), Cao Pi (187–226), Cao Zhi (192–232)), exploring the themes of community building by means of food and feasting, letter writing, and gift exchange. Parts 2 (chapters 3–4) and 3 (chapter 5) focus on two physical and textual sites: Bronze Bird Terrace, a structure built in the Wei capital Ye on Cao Cao's orders, and Red Cliff, the site of the famous battle between Cao Cao and Zhou Yu (175–210) in 208 ce. Translating and analysing an impressive selection of poems and narrative texts, Tian identifies the textual milestones that continuously (re-)defined these two memory places and the people associated with them. The collection of a person's literary output can independently “signal the full presence of a person, no longer growing and changing, but arrested and wholly embodied in the writings he left behind” (p. 26, my emphasis).

I agree with Tian on the centrality of the literary tradition in the construction of memory of the Jian'an/Three Kingdoms period. Texts often provide the only remaining visible link to the past. However, it is worth noting that the textual material itself also points to additional and/or alternative ways and media of literati engagement with the past through objects, landscapes and famous historical sites: “traces” (ji 跡) of a past world long gone. A poem by Ai Xingfu (fl. late thirteenth–early fourteenth century), for example, captures the power of an inkstone supposedly made from remnants of Bronze Bird Terrace to conjure up the past and cast a spell over the present:

This and other texts translated in this volume suggest a complex interrelationship between text, historical artefacts, landscapes and historical sites, all of which allow distinct experiences of the past. What are the epistemological understandings of the past that underlie its poetic representations? Some of the works translated by Tian display a strong ontological realism, an assumption that despite uncertainties in understanding and recounting past events, these are nevertheless ontologically certain, meaning they happened in a certain way at a certain time. By finding their “traces” (ji), these events or persons can be brought into and gain presence in the present. The fact that Tian presents her translations chronologically, revealing intertextual links between individual (groups of) poems and their authors, reinforces the problematic impression that past and present are linked through a continuous thread of literary production and remembrance. This way of presentation favours historical continuity while downplaying interruptions in transmission, dead ends or the disappearance of memories for long periods or even for good.

The first chapter, entitled “Plague and poetry: rethinking Jian'an”, is particularly interesting in this context, for it suggests a different, less certain, relationship to the past. Tian invites us to see “Jian'an as always already an afterthought” (p. 12), an “era born in the awareness of its ending, in nostalgia and mourning” (p. 78). Literary Jian'an literally was a “Dead Poets Society”. The radical implications of this observation could have been stated more clearly. The retrospective discursive formation of the Jian'an era makes the link between past and present particularly tenuous, but even more importantly it renders the ontological foundation of the past uncertain. For it undermines the assumption that despite uncertainties in understanding past events these are nevertheless ontologically certain, meaning they happened in a certain way at a certain time. The compromised ontological status of the Jian'an era reveals itself in references to the era's spectral or ghostlike character, both in the poems themselves as well as in Tian's analysis (“I realized they were all in the register of ghosts”, Cao Pi in a letter to Wu Zhi, p. 25). The spectral nature of the era has the effect that it destabilizes conventional historical truth claims, making an uncomplicated telling of the past impossible. In turn, this impossibility opens up the new possibility for alternative, previously unimagined interpretations. Some sections of the book (Chapter 1, Epilogue “The return of the repressed”) contain subtle echoes of a deconstructive reading of the material – Derrida's Archive Fever is referenced in the bibliography but not directly discussed – while in other chapters the author's interpretation follows the positivist vision of history in her sources. However, the simultaneousness of these two conflicting positions leads to a number of fundamental questions: is there a stable foundation on which knowledge of the past and historical truth claims can be based? Do multiple retellings of a historical event ultimately lead to an erosion of historical truth, memory and (personal or social) identity? In what ways does the past gain, or retain, presence in the present? And what is the role of poetry and literature in all this? The fact that The Halberd at Red Cliff stimulates such reflections beyond offering a wealth of new insights into a fascinating period of Chinese literary history is the reason why the book deserves a wide readership from across all humanities disciplines.